diary – Philip Letts

Fires Raging, Disorder Spreading, Greta Rules

2nd Jun 20202nd Jun 2020 by lettsgroup

Admit it, we’ve all been a little fixated by the recent uptick in social unrest. We’ve had a few flavours to chose from this time around, whether it’s the US protests, the Hong Kong riots or the lockdown rebellions. I guess we enjoy a dose of chaos and confusion, an almost biblical rewind to fire and brimstone.

Given the extreme levels of inequality blown wide open by the Corona crisis and the somewhat ideological leaders currently reigning in Covid flattened countries, you might be asking yourself if civil disorder is a new norm in the making, you know, like Zoom video calls.

But there’s something else chewing away at this. There’s something echoing around my head a bit like a Jean-Michel Jarre concert. Something pulling at my conscience and bugging my brain only this time it’s not Cummings-and-goings. It’s something even more sinister.

For a number of years climate scientists have been warning us of the consequences of unchecked global warming. The cost of climate change. And Greta keeps telling us that we’ve got to listen to these scientists. Not just because they actually know they’re shit but because Greta’s had it with politicians offering her consulting gigs to go solve the Cummings affair, er climate crunch when she just wants to get back to hanging out with her friends and flunking school to go to the beach instead of dropping out to save the planet. (She promises to hit the beach in a non Cummingsy trash the lockdown rules kind of a way).

Environmental scientists have been warning us for a long time that continued global warming will lead to extreme Stormzy, flooding and drought – check. They’ve stated that the continued destruction of key habitats, like rain forests, in the name of industrial farming will increase the risk of desease and wildlife loss – check. And the combination of the two will lead to mass migration, social upheaval and more extreme politics – check disorder in the US, Hong Kong, Syria, Michigan and our very own one man protest at Barnard Castle.

So, in the name of Greta and every darned climate scientist on the planet, we should not only invent a vaccine for Corona but also spend some cash on a wake up pill the size of Donnie’s Trumpian ego to get us ALL to smell the friggin coffee and realise that there is a way out of chaos and confusion and pandemic after pandemic followed by Noah like flooding conditions, hurricanes every five minutes and droughts the length of the second Cummings.

The way to avoid America and China and the rest of us going to war, with Kim Yong Ding Dong chipping in, but not in a teeing up at Mar-a-Lago kind of way, the way to stop the planet going up in fire and SpaceX’s share price going up to Mars is to rewild the friggin planet and keep those pesky bat’s and pangolins and Dom’s locked up as far away as possible in some hidden, protected, untouched rain forest so the virus stays with them. And while the virus sticks to them, the rewilding of our planet bit means we get to stick to where we are – or at least for a little bit longer.

This rewilding would not only be good for us, but would also be good for our little pangolin brethren. It might keep the climate scientists off our backs, keep Greta on the beach and stop us shooting up in a rocket to go piss off some other planet in the name of industrial farming on a separate universe, only to stir up their extra-terrestrials like we pissed off the bats and pangolins down here. Yep, like a bunch of suicidal, narcissistic terrestrial muppets, right at the point at which we might finally recover from Corona, we’ll go shake up a bunch of infested aliens who’ll invade us cos they have SpaceX and Zoom too. Then they’ll unleash on us the next pandemic from hell except this time around even Jacinda won’t be able to save us.

Shit, I think I’ll start rewilding my place. Oh, I already did. I guess I won’t need to migrate to New Zealand after all.

If you enjoy these posts on ‘Surviving’ all I ask is for you to support a vital Climate Change project, called DSP, by giving just £3 or just over $3 per month. To find out more CLICK THIS LINK.

Social Media Under Fire

29th May 202029th May 2020 by lettsgroup

Trump’s fired the starting gun. Removed the pin. Knifed the back. Like a long love affair kicked into the summer sun Donnie’s decided that @Jack (Dorsey…… is there any other kind of Jack?) is to become a droplet off his duck-like ass. The last feather attached to his media composting hat (… interesting visual).

Jack’s the latest in a string of jilted lovers. Used, scoffed at, trampled and spat out. Look at how it worked out for poor ol’ Kim Yong Ding Dong who is apparently still alive (er, right………). Just don’t tell his stunt doubles.

It could be that Donnie wants to take the whole of Silicon Valley down with Jack just to get California to secede so he can permanently eradicate those smokin’ totin’ lefty delegates from November’s election count. Hey, where Bozzer goes Donnie can follow. Check Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

And if you’re still following me (not in the twitter kind of a way) then you’ll get that the Jack in this tale means TOTAL social media take down. Perhaps not like China where any media caution was jettisoned forever ago to the prevailing tornado of a wind. And not in the consumer way of god I’m so bored of Facebook and twitter and Linkedin gibberish and how in spams name am I supposed to possess a friggin elephant-like memory for every password I conjured up just to watch a stream of drivel from my so called friends who I pray I’ll never actually bump into but naively accumulated forever ago when it was the trendy thing to do and apparently even hotter than going to a Cold Play gig. And go figure how you delete/block/muzzle/censor them!

So Donnie’s gonna give Silicon Valley a dose of the neo-liberal cold freeze cos hey, if a Pangolin can nuke the planet, he should at the very least get a pass for downing a few techies on the West Coast. And what better way than getting them square (is that another Jack tech thing?) where it counts, right between their nuts packed with share certificates, which is Wall Street for we will sue your rear ends for publishing content we don’t like, er I mean is offensive or blatantly false or just plain anti-Donnie.

But, thinking this one through, not that Donnie hasn’t already, if some weird dude posts pics of pangolins getting mass murdered in Vietnam can we ALL sue Zuckerpunch or just Donnie? And if the social media companies become responsible for the content on their platform like publishers then presumably they’ll have to pay us citizens for our/their content which kinda screws local media who was about to get paid out by them but sounds kinda ka-ching for the rest of us.

Maybe Donnie’s onto something. Perhaps the social media company take down is actually his entire beat Joe election strategy. You see, if he gets all the social media companies to pay us for sharing the endless crap we publish on their platforms, er publishing outfits then bingo – the whole unemployment things gone. No more bailouts. No more government funded benefits. The neo-con way to fund UBI.

And who needs the hassle of joining the virtual dole queue if you could get paid for shaking your bootie on tiktok or sharin’ it ALL out pretty loud anywhere else controlled by Zucker/Jack/every-friggin-vc-in-America. Wanna dance the cookaracha that’ll get you $5, wanna like Kim’s latest lip gloss that’ll pay $1, wanna share McDonald’s promo’s that’ll earn you 1c. (MickeyD haven’t gotten to where they’ve gotten without being cheaper than Jock which btw is Scottish for Jack.)

Or, jettison your social media accounts, drown out Donnie and pray that netflix isn’t next on the list.

Who’s Leading Us Out Of The Coronavirus Mess?

26th May 202026th May 2020 by lettsgroup

It seems as though every country is currently exiting Corona lockdown in some form or another. For Europe and the US this has come in the nick of time for the annual beach binge as the end of May marks the beginning of summer.

Huge bets have been staked on exit directives holding up and people acting responsibly. ‘Social distancing has to be maintained’ is the new battle cry for 21st Century leaders and their weary law enforcers. Have they seen how packed some of these beaches have gotten? Mind you, the strategy might work, after all who wants to get too close to sweaty, dripping, half baked sun worshipers on New Jersey board walks.

Our leaders are clearly frayed and fatigued from the lockdown stage of the battle against Covid-19 but they would do well to pace themselves as the next phase of the war could prove even more challenging. First they have to successfully reopen without second waves of the pandemic and, talking about waves, they need to get football back on tap. Yep, we need footie like we dream of an ice cold Corona. And let’s face it, leaders need to find some popular(ist) stuff to help their depressed and weary citizens find joy and fun and all things Dom in the spirit of holiday entertainment (not).

But, enough of us lowly citizens. How are our poor leaders faring? I mean, why care about ourselves when we could be mostly concerned about them? Like a puppy dog excitedly chasing a toilet roll after it’s somewhat benevolent owner.

It seems that world leaders wellbeing falls into one of two camps. They’re either female, full of love and compassion and generally in the glow so doing quite well or their male, a bit petulant, slow in and perhaps a little rapido pulling out so generally red faced with frustration. What’s new?

If you were to paint a stark, simplistic picture of leadership types in modern germ warfare you would have to say that women seem to come out on top. And tippy top of the ‘Hottest Tackler of Corona 2020’ has to be New Zealand, Taiwan and Germany – all led by women.

Bottom of the rankings sit USA, Brazil, Russia and the UK all run by men. And, perhaps I should add, a certain kind of man, or is it two in the UK. One who perhaps enjoys their own company more than any other, that find the image of themselves in that mirror more compelling than Mona Lisa or Madonna or Kim just not Kim Yong Ding Dong. Leaders that need golf and shooting and photoshopped jogging pants so long as it’s all in the name of good photo opps.

They have children, sometimes on purpose and mostly after a bender, which is why they can’t seem to remember where they’ve all gotten to, so they embrace us citizens as though we’re their children presumably because it’s easier than tracking down the real ones. They’re the master of the mass hug. You know like Joaquin Pheonix in Gladiator or the slightly confused kid in the horror film that accidentally squished the puppy he so lovingly held. Hopefully not the same one chasing the toilet roll.

When the macho leaders kids, er citizens, get caught misbehaving they’re naturally bounced off to boarding school or Coventry or fruit picking duties cos apparently no one else can do it. They sack ministers as fast as Astra Zeneca presells futures on vaccines, unless, of course, you’re Bozzer for Dom like Russia with Love. They take question time like a three year old takes a telling off – not particularly well.

And when it all comes crashing down – which in the end it always does and their self imposed satire comes to an end – they’ll want us to love them even more and will not understand (with a stamping foot) why we might not want them around anymore. Like that mirror in Dorian Grey; why, oh why, do we smash them away.

Mind you there might be another way. There might be an exit plan for these poor overworked neo-bunnies. There could be a way through this Corona mess. They just need to get that gender transitioning operation and come back as Jacinda Ardern.

In the meantime I’ll dream of New Zealand. More Jacinda with Love than Russia with Love.

Imagine a Post Coronavirus World led by Big Tech

13th May 202025th Jun 2020 by lettsgroup

The poster boy of Covid-19 lockdown, governor Andrew Cuomo of New York, has had an epiphany about how to reimagine New York post Coronavirus. A new post pandemic vision for economic and social reconstruction that we should all pay attention to.

His epiphany (not Tiphany – go read the Sun for that) is, though, less new green deal and more new big tech (side) deal so it looks like the only green stuff floating around New York’s gonna be the greenbacks heading for Bill Gates.

You see, what Corona has taught Cuomo is that human contact is a bit passe and robots are the new cool. After all, how many driverless cars caught the virus? And how many bats and pangolins have you seen infecting Amazon’s little robots stacking boxes in the warehouse?

In a flashdrive of digi-genius Andy’s decided that teacherless schools, nurseries and colleges alongside doctorless hospitals, pharmacistless pharmacies (try saying that after a few drinks) and general peopleless everything (check Amazon) is the way to go. His endless drive to win Governor of the Planet 2020 means he’s gonna do everything possible to hit the ultimate Corona target of zero infections, hospitalizations and deaths by taking the human part right out of the equation.

The government of New York’s takeaway (proving they too can do it better than any restaurant) is that the way to hit this target is to keep EVERYONE at home for ever and to invest in twitter cos they just announced that their workers can work from home ‘for ever’ which means they must also have discovered a vaccine against death.

And what twitter has taught them is that everyone in New York should now work, shop, exercise, eat, prey and make love – yep, you guessed it, at home. Period. Until death do us part. After all, there’s a nifty little Microsoft, Google or Facebook for everything else.

Wanna go to a park? Zoom up your local friggin park warden. Wanna visit the museum? Hit up Google Arts and Culture. Wanna date? May as well do the whole thing online until there’s a robot for that. Want privacy? How very 90’s of you. And wanna do some gardening? Come on! There’s astro turf for that.

Cuomo’s new big tech wheeze will work right up until the day that he wakes up, smells the coffee and realises that the good ol days of the Coronavirus might have been a walk in the virtual park compared to a cyber virus that crashes a delivery drone up his ass, turns Bezos’ robots into a bunch of smart little organised droids who want a tonne more money for taking over humankind and has robo cops out robbing every bank in New York at the click of a Tesla chopper.

So Andy, next time you wanna reinvent your planet, maybe let Dave-boy-Attenborough bend your ear away from Schmidt-I-promise-I’m-not-a-plant-sent-by-Google-or-is-it-Alphabet-now and play it safe. Stick with rewilding Central Park. Just make sure to keep the bat’s and pangolins at bay.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Coronavirus

21st Apr 202021st Apr 2020 by lettsgroup

Sticking with the slightly biblical theme of yesterday’s post I thought that today we should delve a little deeper into who exactly are the saints and the sinners of Covid-19.

Let’s start with the easy one – the saints: naturally the list includes anyone working for any healthcare service anywhere in the world with a big shout out for Kim Jong-ding-dongs poor about to be decapitated physicians, but also care givers (particularly elderly care providers in the thick of it), delivery people, supermarket staff and generally anyone supporting us through lockdown lock-me-up-and-throw-the-key-away-hell-after-all-have-you-met-my-teens? Added to this list should be Milan’s town planner who’s just figured out that pedestrianising the city is the best way to keep Italian drivers off the streets and keep everyone else alive. And a last saintly hat tip goes to Netflix for bringing us ‘Tiger King’ cos we naively thought that shit couldn’t get weirder than this Corona thing!

But, that’s the obvious list. And the one we should all keep raving about and shouting or clapping or singing or walking round and round the garden on a zimmer frame for or climb endless Everest like stairs or Christ even binge watch the Kardashians for. You see, while politicians may have dawdled/dragged their proverbials/hid in the nice house yet somehow paraded their shiz all over prime-time press conferences the saintly ones have been out there holding us all together. You know actually doing stuff called work and getting us what we need to get through lockdown-looneys. And the great irony is, now we’re stuck at home in gracious perpetuity (with the teens), we’d bight off any of their left feet or arm or pretty much any limb just to be able to go back to work. Yes, the same work we’ve been bitchin’ and moaning about for the last God knows how long suddenly seems as attractive as a simple back massage from Pamela Anderson. The same bosses we’ve been whining about and trying to undermine at every turn now seem almost, well, saintly. Particularly when those bosses are politicians who seem to think its OK for them to go back to work but that we still can’t cos we haven’t figured out how to work Zoom.

But there are also unsung hero’s (obviously not Andrea Bocelli) and we’d (not weed) like to shout them out. There’s the Pope who wears a weird robe thingy while walking the empty streets of Rome with some shady looking dudes in black suits stalking him as he tirelessly searches the alleyways for his flock cos they haven’t shown up at St Peters Square the last few Sundays. There’s Mick Jagger who gets the prize for shutting himself in a pint sized room for that online concert to make himself look bigger and presumably poorer to provide a cover for the fact that he pays Charlie Watts so little he can’t even afford a drum kit and also for the fact that he’s the only man on earth smaller than Tom Cruise. There’s Mike Pence for putting up with Donnie and there’s anyone working with Pence for putting up with him and there’s obviously the entire British population for putting up with you know who.

There’s CNN’s Chris Cuomo for getting Covid-19 and being forced to stay on air while his dad gets it up the rear from Donnie and there’s all of us for having to watch their kinda weird English finance news presenter dude bang on about hoping we all have a ‘profitable hour’! A f****** ‘profitable hour’ tard, how in pandemic hell are we supposed to have ANY ‘profitable hour’ when we’re all bankrupt or doled up or paying others to take our oil cos we lost the manual that explained how to switch the goddamned well off or just plain friggin broke thanks to this Corona thing which, seemingly, he’s the last dunce on the planet to think is not a pandemic but a friggin Mexican beer. Christ, does he watch his own news? Maybe he finds himself as annoying as the rest of us and dozes off when he’s on.

There’s my plumber who’s gotta deserve a shout out in the vain hope that he might show up this decade once we’re set free and hopefully won’t hit me up the ass with partial amber friggin traffic light ‘special’ lockdown-looney pricing. Then there’s my mother, who let’s face it, is the only person out there that actually bothers to read this crap. Love you mum. But, last of all, there’s me. Yep, me. For doing nothing more than putting up with the teens. You see, when they had to go to school for real they could get themselves up just fine. Now you know who has to get them up for ‘school’ every friggin day which you would have thought has gotten easier given their commute is exactly five steps past the kitchen which they raid on the way and all they have to do all day is to sit on the couch and pretend to listen to some poor teacher politely bang on to them online while instead they watch TV, do their nails, fall asleep, raid the fridge a little more, social media meme each other and scream the moment I ask them to do anything what so friggin ever as all of a sudden they miraculously (yes Francis they can do it too) have way too much school stuff on one screen when they’re actually watching Kim, and I don’t mean Kim Jong-ding-dong. Then, of course, when it comes to them having dinner or exercise or anything that doesn’t involve them lying on the couch pretending to be at school they just shout out about how school online means it runs all day and night and seven days a week and could we please just keep bringing the food and drinks so they can keep 100% focused on their studies really, honest, promise. And yet, somehow, I can only hear the odd bit of teacher coming out of the room that they keep tightly locked like a government backed loan, but really all I friggin hear ALL day is Kim or Kylie or Bieber-still-with-a-baby-face-no-matter-how-hard-he-tries-to-be, well, hard or friggin Billie Eilish I-got-my-hair-stuck-in-the-paint-machine and the entire goddamned cast of Glee.

And seeing as that list took a while/my sanity I guess I’m gonna go put my feet up with the teens and you’ll have to read my next post for the list of Coronavirus bad and uglies.

Outdoor Exercising during the Coronavirus Lockdown

9th Apr 202020th Apr 2020 by lettsgroup

Exercising outdoors once a day is one of our last remaining Coronarights as locked-down human beings. At least it is in much of the Western world (and for the record I mean the exercise part being our right and not the being a human being human right thing or at least not yet. Mind you…). And you know just how important a right outdoor exercising is when governments keep threatening to take it away – thank you Paris!

There are a few basic rules to outdoor lockdown exercise and you know what they say about rules being made to be…

Rule No 1. Apparently exercise constitutes you actually moving so any of us seen hanging around on benches pretending to bench press or performing some slomo lying down yoga thingy should expect to be arrested. Saying that no one has actually set guidelines on what specific form of movement constitutes exercise. So, for example, when you’re really hungry you could literally kill two birds with one stone by chasing after your dog so hard that it drops dead – it’s totally legit exercise and you’ve just nailed your bbq fodder for the night without having to don the hazmat suit to go fetch it at the Tesco. The key here is the word ‘moving’ so you could argue that moving the deck chair around the park is legit exercise – though we would suggest bench pressing it over your head every so often so you really enhance that legit bit.

Rule No 2. When performing outdoor exercise you must not break social distancing rules other than with the family unit living under the same roof. So if you want to practice boxing then you CAN use toddler as punch bag but not your boxing buddy who you ‘accidentally’ bumped into in the park. Jose Mourinho might want to pay attention to this one. You can practice fencing with the teens or bashing them with a baseball bat or dropping them over the side punting down the lake. Tree hugging is allowed so long as it does not act as foreplay to something much more interesting and try not to tree hug the cat cos apparently animals can catch Covid-19 which I guess is no shit sherlock given animals gave us this friggin pandemic in the first place. So actually you might want to rethink the chasing the dog till it drops bbq bit but you don’t have to rethink the illegit sun bathing thing any further than buying a stretcher and getting the tweens to carry you round the park at a double quick march while you stretch out in the shorts with your headphones on so you get to hear ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ rather than the tweens whingeing on while you enjoy optimal tanning tactics with the sun reflector under your chops. Just make sure not to do this for too long in case you get skin cancer (maybe not in England) or park infected with the Corona – mind you if you do catch Corona (not the drink) the tweens can just keep stretchering you all the way down to A&E and if you don’t you know what excuse to pull out your rear end when you get chased down by the police – which could also get constituted as just another form of exercise.

Rule No 3: Outdoor exercise must not contravene the social gathering rule. This one is really simple – whatever Jose Mourinho tells you to do just ignore it and if Jake Gyllenhaal and that spidey kid challenge you to the outdoor version of standing upside down while taking your t-shirt on and off just remember they are paid enough to do dumb fuck things like that and they probably have way better abs than you so do a Ryan Reynolds and just say ‘no’. Mind you if Pamela Anderson asks you to do it then that’s a whole different game of socially distance compromised football. Sorry Jose. Again. But, if a whole load of you all ran round the park at the same time stretchered by tweens and on the sound of sirens you all headed in concert to the nearest hospital then please do the decent thing on arrival and put your tweens forward as recently graduated medical students which could prove to be a bullet proof way of silencing them while you volunteer to clean the toilets which would be a bullet proof way of silencing you and finally bring a whole load more meaning to listening to ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ on the stretcher. Just let me know which hospital you ended up in so when I land Coronavirus I can steer as far away as possible from it.

All considered, I think I’ll just exercise at home.

Eating to survive the Coronavirus Lockdown

8th Apr 202020th Apr 2020 by lettsgroup

In one of my earlier posts we looked at what we can and can’t do during the Coronavirus lockdown. While there’s a seismicly large list of things we can’t do there is, sadly, just a very short list of things we can do. I’m glad to say that right up there in the legit list is ‘eating’. Or is it…

While modern capitalism has made damned sure that getting food, i.e. hitting the supermarket in a non-heist kinda way, was our most basic God given right, it’s now about as easy as doing a downward dog without cracking your back. But, you know you may be in some kinda food pickle when the big-ass boss dude from Tesco writes to you personally – and presumably every other potential customer on this planet – cos who can remember the last time we shopped there. I mean have you seen those deals at lidl?? Mind you, only the world’s first friggin pandemic gets Tesco boss-man to actually get off his you know what to do this bizarre thingy called ‘talking to the punter’ – but, none the less, he breaks all his permo customer distancing rules just to let us know how easy it is to shop at Tesco again, presumably so long as: a) you don’t need to spend more than a toilet rolls worth cos that’s how you can keep it within contactless payment limits and not get smeared with coronachromes banging away at the payment gadget buttons (can’t they just buy some of their own friggin cleaning sanitiser producty thing and clean those damned machines a bit more??), b) you go into their store one at a time which means you can’t dump the bill on your partner and c) you be patient with their delivery guy/gal cos apparently they’re so damned popular that the first delivery spot is in 2028.

So we decide to don the hazmat suit and head to the local supermarket following the latest, latest guidelines which state that on our return we should leave the food unpacked and outside for at least 3 hours so any germs that might have gotten onto the non dodgy food from the shipper/wharehouse/store die off outside and not in your belly meaning in turn that if you’re one of the gazzilion people living in a shoebox apartment you have to leave the food on the street so you lose it to the gits nextdoor and if your luckily enough to have a terrace it goes to the birds and having a garden just means the dog gets it. Which all adds up to going hungry for another week or hitting the store twice in a day guaranteeing you either get arrested or go broke. Mind you, what’s new. In the mean time that nice top man from Tesco gets to make even more obscene money while we all starve to death from buying his food which I guess is capitalism in a nutshell.

Or, don’t go shopping at all. Now there’s a plan worthy of a whole new food survival plan. Instead we could just eat each other which should deal with the whole social distancing thing, or eat the neighbours which not only means they can’t steal the food next time but also deals with the over population thingy that probably got us to this pandemic food-hole in the first place or just eat the dog who likely got Coronavirus from eating our food-in-the-garden that got it from the contaminated till at the Tesco that got it from their wharehouse which got it from the Tesco boss man when he visited said wharehouse which was his grand plan all along to get us to freak out about contaminated food so we have to leave it out in the street/terrace/garden so he can look like a hero for getting us all to shop more often so he can write us this goddamned self gloating email so he gets to keep his job and his bonus the size of my dogs belly even though he never spoke to a damned customer in his life – up until this email of course. Which might also be capitalism in a nutshell but, let’s be honest, might also prove that he’s actually damned clever.

But then again getting Coronavirus could mean that you don’t need food at all or that you get to go to hospital and eat their food for free. Having tasted hospital food I think I’ll just curl up, find some religion and fast until this whole Covid-19 lockdown thing goes away.

Wellbeing Survival Tips for the Coronavirus Lockdown

7th Apr 202020th Apr 2020 by lettsgroup

I was watching one of those popular news channel shows when they ran a section on wellbeing tips for surviving the Coronavirus lockdown. It got me thinking (which is generally a dangerous thing).

Here are some of the wellbeing tips from the nice lady: 1. Don’t gorge on Coronavirus news and get info overload. And to be honest she kinda had me at that one. I mean how in Ted Turners sake are we supposed to dodge Covid-19 news – it’s friggin everywhere. It’s plastered all over the TV, Internet, email inboxes, Whatsapp yacks, social media, telephone chats with ANYONE and family chit chats. So I guess where she was heading was we should dump the broadband, TV, cable, satellite, mobile phone, land-line AND conversations with the family – OK, now I’m kinda listening. It would also sure take social distancing to a whole new level and presumably leave us talking to the dog which I noticed I was starting to do in any case – I mean how in the world else am I supposed to dodge the inane socio-babble with the teens. It may also prove just how clever this wellbeing lady might actually be. Or maybe not. Take a look at her second piece of wellbeing advice.

2. Make sure you have as many virtual social interactions as possible. Which probably means she’s an investor in Zoom. Or maybe not given we’ve already taken her first piece of advice by now and have no phone, broadband, Skype or Whatsapp. Which is though saving us a tonne of money and reminding us just how powerful ‘the sound of silence’ actually is and how wellbeing smart those Simon and Garfunkel guys really were and maybe they should be giving us wellbeing advice instead or maybe they already have and we just need to listen to all their songs which of course I can’t friggin do as I dumped the goddamned broadband. Mind you thanks to her advice I have at least gotten really good at hacking into the neighbours Wi-Fi and cable box.

Anyhoo, her next piece of wellbeing advice went a little like this: 3. Go out into nature as often as possible. Which is a real kick in the pants for pretty much everyone as let’s face it luvvy we all live in shoebox apartments with windows jammed shut thanks to the smog thing and the closest we get to outdoor space is the cats litter tray. So I guess that means get out onto the streets and parks and hit the yoga mat to meditate which leads straight to getting arrested for ‘sunbathing’, getting ass dumped in jail for kinda screaming that I was actually yoga mat exercising and go catch Coronavirus in jail cos let’s face it it’s kinda hard to do the social distancing thingy in there.

The last titbit I remember was wellbeing tip number 4. Gather as a family as often as possible to generally chat, play and meet. You’re friggin joking right. Have you met my Damian family?? I mean a chat has some friggin way of always turning into some whine or winge or teenage-style-endless-friggin-list-of-reasons-why-friends-are-bitchin-Netflix-ain’t-ever-got-enough-shows-my-buddys-all-have-the-iphone11x-so-where-the-frig-is-mine-oh-and-school-is-just-as-lame-online. So the only possible reason for this last (thank Damian) piece of well(not)being advice is presumably cos the nice wellbeing lady doesn’t have a family or she doesn’t have a brain or she’s hard of hearing and keeps that hearing device handily turned off. Well I can tell you, not in this house. Here we pray for the moment our ears get stood on by a buffalo so we get hearing devices and make sure they’re permanently shut off.

But thanks for those wellbeing tips. Really. Oh, and for the family wellbeing meeting bit see my last post.

The Daily Family Meeting in the Time of Coronavirus

6th Apr 202020th Apr 2020 by lettsgroup

This is a tough time indeed. A time for reflection, meditation and according to Trump a time for hydroxychloroquine. It’s also a time for us all to get a little team meeting cold turkey. You know, that favorite time of the day when we get to sit around a table together and listen to the boss bang endlessly on about the latest goals, objectives, tasks, chores, bores and any other company meeting mumbo jumbo designed to make hydroxychloroquine sound like, well, viagra. Let’s face it, we miss our team meetings. It’s the time of day when we get to genuinely switch off or sketch or cartoon or text each other with memes of boss-man in really scary positions. It made sharing weekend photos and naughty videos so much more appropriate knowing that they were pinged to each other under the table in blessed obscurity all while boss man/lady thought they were getting the better of us mere mortals by expounding the latest corporate mumbo jumbo techno garbage about just how crap we really are. It’s OK, we keep reminding ourselves, we already know how crap we are. Just sit in on one of our damned customer service calls!

Anyhoo, for those of you missing your all too regular fix of company/team meeting and finding that Zoom doesn’t quite hit the spot, we have a simple cure. The ‘daily family team meeting’ to survive the Coronavirus lockdown.

Here are a few rules to the daily family team meeting. 1. It has to be face to face. I know your teenage lovelies will think this a bit weird as they’ve never done anything face to face but tough. 2. EVERYONE has to attend and participate equally – no matter how young they are. You may as well teach toddler now. Even if all it achieves is to put the poor thing off meetings for life and stop them being boring as shit and joining Google one day. 3. Meet every day at the same time, probably in the morning – it’ll really kick the day off with a bang. 4. Think really hard before deciding who should lead the meeting. After all, this could be a unique chance for you to shun the ultimate in hospital passes and nail your partner to the meeting leader abuse wall. 5. Get one of your teens to take notes and then get them to circulate said notes – trust me it’s worth it to hear the daily excuses/whining/unrepenting abuse and read their sheer mastery of passive aggressive note taking. You never know, it might even be a handy tool for you one day. 6. Set key family objectives from the outset like ‘how you all chip in to help pay the rent – you too toddler!’ or ‘who wants to call gran today’ or ‘whoever keeps giving toddler the toilet brush as a chew toy better stop’.

The great thing about the family meeting is you have an instant punishment forum for any particularly bad behaviour. “Whoever just stuck baby Jane upside down in the toilet gets to do a full presentation tomorrow on household productivity stats and recommendations including time spent on said toilet per family member plus peak Netflix utilisation by hour and minute. We expect detailed data and cost/benefit analysis, graphing and trend extrapolation.” Trust me this beats any Guantanamo waterboarding.

And to get you all revved up here’s a miniature snapshot of our daily family team meeting from this morning. “So Dad, (like a friggin muppet I didn’t follow rule 4.) your problemo if I’m a bit noisy this morning but I didn’t get a chance to make my mochachino yet as you didn’t wake me up in time for this damned meetup thingy so I’ll be mixin’ it while you bang on. And that task you gave me last time – sorry what was it again and why should I give a damn in the first place. Oh and someone scream out loud when it’s my turn to bang on about God only knows what as I’ll be headset on till then to drown out the mochachino mixing clatter. Back to you Dad, sorry er bossy/chairmany/lame father thing.”

Oh Christ, where’s that link to Zoom?

Advertising in the time of Coronavirus

3rd Apr 202020th Apr 2020 by lettsgroup

Seeing as we’re all stuck at home and TV network ratings are soaring like no Christmas turkey tomorrow I thought that, as an avid viewer, I should publish the Letts offic (blame the daughter-lingo thingy again) guide to advertising in the time of Coronavirus.

Here’s our list of SUPPORTED advertising categories: government health warnings (bring it on baby), food, drink, alcohol (we thought this particularly worthy of being singled out), books, dvd’s (for those of you who haven’t figured out a neat not-so new thingy called Netflix), in-home fitness, any kinda loan (and NOT loan sharks), any kinda government handout (please), any place whatsoever that actually sells hand sanitizers this side of us all being….., hazmat suits, seeds, plants, aspirins (for dealing with the kid thing), cough syrup, NHS gift aid, self-help stuff (no quack is a duck quack quack in my books right now) any environmental causes, wildlife (cos we like those shots of cute animals), kid protection services (mine will need it too if they don’t stop flipping channels and hogging bandwidth), Kickstarter campaigns for Covid-19 vaccines and last but by no means least our very own pre-packed tombstones.

And here’s our list of INAPPROPRIATE advertising categories: guides to price gauging, betting (like we have any money right now), savings products (see betting), banking (cos you screwed the economy last time round so you don’t get to milk us this time too), funeral parlours, cars (too tempting), fashion (see cars), new movies (not until you actually start releasing them again), James Bond memorabilia (see movies), real estate (really), support Trump campaigns (please), support Johnson campaigns (see Trump), support Bolsonaro campaigns (what’s the point he doesn’t have any – support that is – not Coronavirus, they have plenty of that), kids toys and anything to do with Easter (see the no money thing and aspirins to deal with the kids bit), drugs (if only), travel (really), news (Christ we’ve got enough of that!).

Phew, that was a little exhausting. I think I’ll get back to watching the TV.